The Global Consciousness Project
I came across an interesting article about the Global Consciousness Project, which I’ve mentioned briefly before in my further thoughts on the Million Dollar Experiment.
Simply put, there are 65 random event generators around the world, simple computers that randomly spew forth a series of ones and zeroes, akin to flipping a coin over and over again. Normally, the computer would generate roughly the same number of ones and zeroes, the results are recorded on a graph and most times the graph is a simple steady line. Any changes in the results would result in a curvy line.
What’s interesting is that on certain days on which significant world events happened, the graphs shift massively from the norm and produce radically different graphs. This happened on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral, on 911, on the day of the Asian Tsunami, and many more.
And what really gets me is this paragraph in the article:
During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate whether the power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the machine’s usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails.
It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.
Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, ‘forcing it’ to produce unequal numbers of ‘heads’ or ‘tails’.
According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have happened – but it did. And it kept on happening.
And it makes me wonder about the power of human thought to influence events and this ‘global consciousness’ around the world. Are we as powerless as some of us think or perhaps more powerful than we dare to imagine?
Is this the beckoning proof to the age old maxim that we do indeed, get back what we put in? Focus on poverty and depression, and the world ‘flips its coins’ to land more on its ‘depression side’? Focus on what is good and desired and the world is more likely to throw the coin in your favor? ‘As a man thinketh in his heart so is he’?
Interesting, isn’t it?
What do you think?
Thank you for the article, Alvin. That’s beautiful.
Hi Alvin, just wanted to introduce my self. I think I found my way over here from Andrew Wee’s blog, but I could be wrong. I absolutely love what and how you wrote about this experience in Thailand. Very inspiring. I never even thought about what meditations could really do until I recently listen to the audio book of “Autobiography of a Yogi” which I really enjoyed. Thanks again for this post. I look forward to reading more in the future.
Thanks guys, I’m glad you found my post of value
I can’t wait to try Vipassana meditation myself. Meditation for me consists of me doing Yoga for twenty minutes then Shavasana for ten. I need to step up my meditation to a new level.
Thanks for the push!
Are you still anticipating in Vipassana every now and then? I do it everyday now, makes my life much smoother than before. Glad to see people who actually care for the goods of others